


Controls and Mechanics

by htruona (circhester)



Series: Apparently Humorous LU One-Shots [1]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crack, Crack—just to emphasise, Gameplay Dynamics, Gen, Humour, I can’t even add ‘treated seriously’ to that, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Making Fun Of Hardware, Nintendo Hardware, Questioning of Game Logic, Tutorial Sections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21520609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circhester/pseuds/htruona
Summary: Every Link had his own set of dynamics he was bound to—resulting in things like Sky’s ability to fall asleep anywhere without warning, or Wild’s incapability to keep his head on straight, or Legend’s eternal confusion overwhich button did what again, dammit?The Links didn’t always understand each other’s strange actions, but they were a family nonetheless.(A study in some of the stranger, um,qualitiesthe Links have.)
Series: Apparently Humorous LU One-Shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676488
Comments: 91
Kudos: 813





	Controls and Mechanics

**Author's Note:**

> ... i’m sorry
> 
> actually no, i’m not. take this. take my crack.

On the way to, well, wherever the hell they were heading, Wild stumbled across a rock in the path—about the size of a football, big but small enough to lift and throw and an unsuspecting Chuchu. He jumped over it.

“Was that an autojump?” Sky asked. Wild had only met everyone a whole week ago, so needless to say the group was still figuring out his gameplay dynamics, which were apparently wildly (hah) different from everyone else’s.

“What’s an autojump?” Wild was confused. He was confused a lot with this group.

Sky stared at him as if he had declared that, say, monsters weren’t meant to still be able to one-shot you after more than tripling the number of heart containers owned. Because of course they were. Even after fully decking himself out in armour upgraded to the point where it had 80 defense points, Ganon had taken out 9 of his heart containers in the first hit.

(Not that the author was speaking from experience or anything. Of course not. ~~Thanks, Mipha…~~ )

Sky walked to a conveniently placed hole in the path. “An autojump is when you walk over a hole and just…” He walked to the hole and seemed to jump on instinct.

Wild frowned. That made absolutely no sense. “What button is it?” he asked. X was the jump button. X was always the jump button. Unless it was switched with B, but since nobody did that, it was X.

Sky scrunched his eyebrows together. “It doesn’t have a button?”

Four stepped in. “Do you have Roc’s Feather then to help you jump?” He went into his inventory, selected a feather and put it in the X-slot? A lot of them had to put items into a certain button to use them. Wild thought that was really weird. Four exited his inventory and jumped, doing a front-flip.

Legend copied him, performing an identical front-flip.

“No?” Wild said. “How would a feather help me jump?”

“ _How would a feather help me jump?_ , he says,” Legend snarked as if it were the most obvious thing. “You can’t jump without a feather. That’s just how it is.”

“ _I_ can jump…” Hyrule muttered.

“You had a side-scrolling game. That doesn’t count,” Wind said.

Hyrule stuck his tongue out at Wind, and jumped. Everyone flinched. Wind swore—violently.

“‘Rule, you can’t just _do_ that!” Wind shouted. “You’ll give me a fucking heart attack…”

“Language,” Time automatically reprimanded. “But really, Hyrule, jumping so carelessly is dangerous.”

Wild stared at the whole group with wide eyes, wondering what was happening. “What’s wrong with jumping?” he asked. “Legend and Four just did it.”

Twilight laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. He shook his head. “Legend and Four’s jumps are different. They call upon the Feather to make them lighter, and that’s how they lift into the air, but…” Twilight shifted his gaze to Hyrule, jumping up and down in glee and taking great delight in the looks of horror adorning everyone else’s faces. “Hyrule’s jumps are… unnatural. He uses no feather, and it’s not an autojump either. It’s… _voluntary._ ”

Though Wild had no idea what Twilight was on about, the venom in his last word had him shivering.

But then he realised. He could jump too. Whenever he wanted. 

With a grin, Wild jumped—laughing as Twilight couldn’t contain a frightened ‘hyah’. The author couldn’t believe she had actually just written that last part.

“You can jump too? Without items?!” Hyrule exclaimed, still jumping. The childish hope in his voice replaced Time’s instinctual fear with Fatherly Feelings for a single moment.

Wild grinned. “Hell yeah I can!” He jumped up and down, imitating Hyrule’s movements.

“I’ve been waiting thirty years for this! Do you use A too?”

“No, I use X…”

“What’s an X? Is that a new button?”

“It’s been around for a long time, I think.”

It would be useful to note that during this entire conversation, Wild and Hyrule continued to jump around, giving the rest of the group heart failure.

Staring at the two of them from behind a conveniently placed tree that the author wasn’t convinced was there when she started to write this scene, Warriors shivered. Jumping voluntarily without items—in a 3D game too, in Wild’s case—it terrified him.

* * *

Sky became still, stopping dead in the middle of the woods.

“Sky? You alright?” Warriors asked.

Sky flopped onto the ground, leaning against a tree. “Can we take a breather?”

Legend eyed him. “…Why?”

Sky sighed. He could feel it now—the drain on his soul, the quiet invitation to the abyss of nothing. Blackness grew through his vision. The void, as a concept, was one frightening; yet Sky had never felt so welcomed by its doom.

He blinked the darkness from his eyes.

“Sorry, but—” He leaned into the tree, snuggling against it as if it were a pillow. “My Wiimote batteries ran out of charge…”

And just like that, Sky fell asleep.

* * *

Legend hated the Goddesses. He hated all of them. 

This was for a few reasons. The first reason that sprang to mind was, of course, the whole Koholint thing—what kind of Goddess got a kick out of that one? Who woke up that morning and thought ‘Hey, let’s strand Link on an island—but _get this_ , the island he’s on and the people on it? They don’t even exist! How _hilarious_ would that be!’?

Whoever it was, Legend wanted to make it very clear that he resented them. More than resented, actually. Hated. Despised. Hasste—yeah, he would even go into Lorulean for this. 

But there was one more thing Legend hated about the Goddesses. Even more so than the fact they had shoved him on about six different journeys to save Hyrule and its various counterparts over the years.

He hated the fact that they had _changed the damn controls so many times_.

Fuck them. Fuck the Goddesses to hell. He didn't even know how to talk to people anymore—was it A, or was it R? It couldn’t be R, because dashing with the pegasus boots was R, but R was also the shield and the pegasus boots were actually L? But talking couldn't be A, either, because A was to use his item but items were Y and also X, but he didn’t always _have_ a Y or X and when he did Y was also the map and the map was also - and SELECT and X and L and—

Legend was going to go insane. Who decided he should have games on the SNES, then the Gameboy, then on the Wii—but, of course, there had to be Gamecube controls with that one too—and then also on the 3DS and the Switch? So many different buttons. So many different controls.

Legend was going to _scream._ Fuck.

* * *

“You know what I’m glad for, now I’m done my journey?” Twilight announced one night over dinner. “No more tutorial sections.”

“Yes!” Sky shouted. “The amount of cutscenes in mine…” He shuddered. “It’s not that the cutscenes were bad, but it was just so _long._ ”

Twilight slammed his drink onto the table.. “Goddess, yeah. Mine was more ‘hey, Link, can you go catch a fish?’ or ‘can you please rescue my baby carrier from a monkey?’. I was almost relieved to wake up in the dungeons of Hyrule Castle to be honest.”

Wind spluttered. “What the fuck did you do?”

“ _Language_ ,” Time automatically said. 

“I’m not fucking sorry. I just wanna know what shit Twilight did to end up in the castle dungeons of all places.”

“I, uh,” Twilight paused. “I don’t actually know what I did. I think maybe just existing while the Twilight Realm invaded was enough.”

“Ouch. Sounds rough,” Wind said with approximately the same amount of sympathy he had exercised while stabbing Ganondorf in the head—i.e. none at all. 

“Back to the tutorial thing,” Wild said, because the author accidentally went off track and wanted to bring it back around so that she could actually deliver the point of the scene. “You had to _do_ stuff like that?”

Sky stared at him with a slight hint of jealousy. “You didn’t? Isn’t exposition just something that happens with tutorial sections?”

“Only at the end… Most of my tutorial was an old man promising me he’d give me a paraglider if I did stuff, then refusing to give me it because I had to do more stuff on top of what he asked… Then at the end he turns out to be the King of Hyrule and also dead for a century, and he told me about Ganon and Zelda and everything which was a bit stressful, but at least I got a sick paraglider out of it, right?”

Everyone went silent. Legend was the first to speak. “Terrible, that. Not following through on his promises. King or not, I hope you told him.”

”I did! After he refused to give me it I stopped listening to what he was saying. He asked me stuff and all I answered was ‘Give me the paraglider’. Asshole.”

Legend nodded approvingly. “Rapidly pressing A—wait, no, R—A—fuck. Who knows. Rapidly skipping dialogue: you’re a true Link.”

”Aw, thanks.”

“How does a dead guy give you a paraglider?” Four asked.

Wild shrugged. “Who knows.”

“I think invading Hyrule Castle was my tutorial,” Legend said. Later he’d think back on this and realise that it was probably the most he had said about any of his journeys, ever. “Do you know how _long_ it took to find that underground passage?”

“So Twilight did some unspecified crime, Legend did breaking and entering… Any more crimes to add to the table?” Warriors asked. 

Legend thought on it for a moment. “Add ‘kidnapping of a princess’.”

“Sure—wait, what?”

Legend elaborated no further.

“Hold on a second,” Hyrule said. “You guys got tutorial sections?”

“‘Rule, what the fuck is wrong with your games?” Wind asked.

Hyrule shrugged. He had no idea. In all honesty, he was pretty certain he actually spawned in that field—it wasn’t as if the game gave him any backstory…

* * *

“I refuse to accept this.”

“On a scale of one to Twilight about the fact he’s only in one game, how much are you in denial?” 

Twilight scoffed. “Y’all ain’t ever played ‘Link’s Crossbow Training’ and it shows,” he said.

Four was on the verge of tears. “Please, Twi… You do not have to say y’all.”

“ _Y’all_ ,” Twilight emphasised, his use of the word being much more ironic when Four remembered that Twilight had managed to find out about the whole splitting thing, “can shut the fuck up. Would you rather I said y’ain’t?”

“I’d rather you said neither.”

* * *

“Wild?” Twilight said, voice cautious in such a way that it would disturb not even the apocalypse, “Are you okay?”

Wild whirled around to face him—before his head faced back upwards on its own, moved by forces unknown and unstoppable by man. His legs also moved independent of his thoughts. Each step appeared to come faster and faster, around in circles, and Twilight was a little bit terrified that Wild would soon meet an unfortunate demise tripping into the campfire.

Should he throw a bucket of water into the flames just in case? It might be worth it.

“Don’t mind me,” Wild said. “I’ve got Joy-Con drift.”

* * *

It was dark, and Legend couldn’t see. So he did what was necessary. He pressed X, to which his lantern was set, so he could light everything up.

His map flew out instead.

Legend glared at the map, barely containing his rage. What about Y, then?

Another map flew out. 

He pressed A: all he did was lift the pile of maps, and in a rage, threw them to the ground immediately after. Pressed Y again: his boomerang flew out. Of course it did. He had his boomerang set to Y. 

X should be working now, right? He pressed X again. He got a screenshot of the top screen of the 3DS! What a joy. That wasn’t, however, his _fucking_ lantern.

He pressed B, and slashed his sword, as expected. R brought out his shield, and L brought out his pegasus boots.

Legend just wanted his lantern. Why couldn’t he get his lantern?

One final time, he pressed X, and Legend almost cried at the sight of the lantern sitting innocently in his hand. Except he didn’t cry, because that would be emotional and he and an image to maintain. 

…The temptation was still there, though.

* * *

Every single day Warriors woke up with a burden placed heavy on his shoulders. It wasn’t one of war, of having to murder thousands of monsters per battle just so the kingdom may stand the next morning; it wasn’t one of shame, of letting the Master Sword twist his perception until he believed himself invincible; and this specific burden definitely had nothing to do with Cia and her, erm… _choice of interior decoration_ , putting it lightly.

Those three points definitely didn’t help the situation, however. The last in particular. 

No. His real burden, the one which weighed on his mind every day, an invisible force on his shoulders every day, so strong he was convinced he had back pain at the ripe age of, er, however long the period of time between the current reading and release of his game (August 2014) was (the author did not want to update this every year), was, well—

—It was that Warriors’ game was released on the WiiU. _Only_ for the WiiU. 

And, of course, not even being canon he didn’t even get the chance of even a port to the 3DS until two years later. Two whole years.

Warriors carried a heavy burden. Sure, Wind and Twilight got HD remakes on the WiiU, and Wild’s game was released for both the Switch and WiiU—but those were nothing compared to a sole WiiU launch.

He shivered. The author suddenly realised Warriors had done that twice this chapter. The life of a WiiU sole-release title was truly a hard one.

* * *

“Legend, chill! Just press B to talk, you’ll be fine,” Hyrule said.

“Don’t do that!” Four shouted. “Goddess, ‘Rule… B is the _attack_ button for us.”

Hyrule looked at him weirdly. “Yeah. B is attack for me too. It’s also talk.”

“How are your attack and talking buttons the same? Your technology definitely isn’t good enough to distinguish between them.”

“Rude,” Hyrule said. “But yeah, it can’t do that. Taking is just,” Hyrule placed his sword into the sheath in his back (internally, Four screamed _when did he bring that out?_ ), then brought it out right after, swinging it down so suddenly Four yelped while moving out of the way. “Hello.”

“What the— _Have you always done that?_ ”

“Only when I’m on the Zelda II controls. Which I am all of the time, because the Zelda I controls don’t _let_ me talk to people. Have you really never noticed?”

“ _No!_ ”

* * *

Wild’s head snapped to the side. He hissed in pain.

“You have really got to get that drift fixed…” Time said.

* * *

Ghirahim simply did not know what to think of this guy who had just summoned him, Gammon village, or whatever his name was.

“It’s _Ganondorf_ ,” Gammon village corrected. 

Ganon, gammon, close enough. A Dorf was just a village. Ghirahim basically had the name one hundred percent accurate.

“Why did you summon me here? What do you _want_?” Ghirahim sneered. He had things much better to do—like tormenting the sky-child, planning new dramatic ways to reveal his presence to the sky-child, threatening to take away everything the sky-child loved… Some fine examples of things he could be doing that would be a much more beneficial use of his time than this.

(Somewhere, several worlds away, Sky had the feeling someone out there was plotting his demise. Instantly he knew it was Ghirahim. It was always Ghirahim. It didn’t even matter that the guy was technically dead—nobody else had the unique ability to give Sky this feeling.

“Fuck you too,” he said to the sky. Sky as a rule didn't swear, but for Ghirahim he’d make an exception. Fuck him.)

“I _want_ you to help me obliterate my enemies so that I can finally get the Triforce from that damned Hero of Courage and Princess,” Gammon village said. 

Ghirahim raised an eyebrow. Now that sounded interesting. A chance to toy with the Hero of Courage—sadly, he doubted this hero would be the sky-child, however— _and_ a chance to gain the Triforce for himself while he played this Gammon village fool like a harp?

And when Ghirahim said he’d play him like a harp, he actually intended to perform the song decently. Unlike the _sky-child_. The sky-child simply strummed his inelegant fingers up and down the strings of the poor harp, not even deigning to put some care into the poor object, while the background music made it sound like the sky-child was doing a simply fantastic job of it. 

That pissed Ghirahim off and he was not going to stand for it. He’d play this Gammon village like a harp and he’d play him _properly_.

But enough of that.

“I suppose I can accept that,” Ghirahim said. “But don’t expect me to bow down to you. You aren’t my true master—you can keep track of the battery on your own Wiimote.”

* * *

“Y’all’d’ve,” Twilight said.

Four shuddered. “Stop. Please.”

“Y’ain’t’ve.” 

“I am _begging_ you.”

* * *

“We haven’t spoken about the most fucking important thing here yet,” Wind said. “Whose Hyrule has the best music?”

Time smiled. “Finally, a topic I’m actually relevant for. The author can write more lines for me now than just ‘language’.” The author wanted to make it clear that she did not appreciate that callout, however since it was true, she would not be editing it out.

“What?”

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

Legend smirked, preparing for the debate. Wind met everyone’s eyes head-on—his trump card was ready to be unleashed.

Wild hung back a little from the conversation, personally enjoying his own music but understanding that it was a bit of an, how to say, _controversial_ subject. Just because of his Hyrule Field theme…

Legend began. “I’d like to place my Hyrule Castle theme on the table.”

“I’m putting my Hyrule Castle theme in, too,” Four said.

“That’s just a copy of my Hyrule Castle theme. That doesn’t count.”

“The Minish Cap version.”

“You can’t hear that properly when you’re playing it on a Gameboy.”

“Fuck you.”

Wind stepped forward. “I submit ‘Farewell Hyrule Ki’—”

“That’s just my Hyrule Castle but slower,” Legend pointed out.

“At least you can hear actual fucking instruments in mine, like a piano, instead of whatever your SNES can produce.”

Legend smirked. “Well, then, I’m altering my submission to the 3DS remake.”

“Are you fucking with me,” Wind deadpanned.

Legend simply smiled. “It’s truly such a hard life I have, having created all of the best soundtracks in the series—”

“—Hold on, there,” Time said. “I haven’t said anything yet.”

“Oh?”

Time chuckled. “Gerudo Valley.”

“The Dark World.”

“Windmill Hut.”

“Lorule Castle.”

“Lost Woods.”

“Zelda’s Lullaby.”

To the side, Wind sat sulking. “I didn’t get to use my trump card…” he said. Time and Legend’s bickering grew into background noise. 

Wild sat next to him. “What was your trump card?”

“Dragon Roost Island,” he said.

Wild nodded, approving. “Good choice.”

They fell into silence. Ahead of them, Time and Legend were still trading back and forth.

“Ballad of the Windfish.”

“Clocktown.”

“Face Shrine, remastered.”

“I’m pretty sure those last two you just said don’t exist.”

Legend shrugged. “Technically not.” Maybe in another fanfiction the sole mention of this would trigger an Angsty Scene on the grounds of it being, well, Koholint—but alas, this was crack, and crack cared neither for logic nor feelings. 

Warriors stepped in. “Sorry to interrupt, but—”

“No. Absolutely not. Your soundtrack doesn’t even compare to ours. No.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look at what you did to poor Twilight's Hyrule Field theme.” Twilight, very much not having listened to the conversation at all, jumped. 

Warriors scoffed. “Yeah. I made it _better_.”

Legend ignored him. “And don't get me _started_ on what you did to Kakariko Villa—”

“I saw you jamming to that one, Legend. Don’t even try. It’s good and you know it.”

Legend sighed, deflating. “It really is, and that’s the worst part.” He turned to Time, and continued, “Yuga Battle.”

“Oh, we’re continuing? Stone Tower Temple.”

“Nightmare Battle.”

* * *

“Why are these shrines half-orange on your map?” Four asked Wild, staring at the Sheikah Slate—his eyes a suspicious shade of blue named purple. Violet, if you would.

Wild groaned. “They’re _apparatus_ shrines,” he said.

“Apparatus shrines?”

“They’ve got _motion controls_ in them. I’m not doing those.”

After those words, they both felt it—an ancient, primal rage that filled the room, suffocating everyone in its presence. An anger so powerful and all-encompassing that Four and Wild could do nothing but cower under its influence.

“Did I hear _motion controls_?” Sky said.

Just kidding—the source of the anger was Sky. He was too nice to get that angry. But it didn’t change the fact that Sky really, really did not like motion controls.

“Do you have them too?” Wild asked. “I’m so sorry. I feel your pain.”

“I have so much motion control…”

“I am so, so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be glad i edited this, y’all. the line “twilight slammed his drink onto the table with a slam” almost made it into the final cut.
> 
> you all should see my tabs after writing this. it’s all “links awakening controls, “a link to the past controls”, “a link between worlds controls”,, all of the games. oh my god

**Author's Note:**

> be glad i edited this, y’all. the line “twilight slammed his drink onto the table with a slam” almost made it into the final cut.
> 
> you all should see my tabs after writing this. it’s all “links awakening controls, “a link to the past controls”, “a link between worlds controls”,, all of the games. oh my god
> 
> (edit: thank u for 420 kudos :D that's the only milestone that counts)
> 
> edit (30/05/20) (yes im british shut up): alright! i'm going to take advantage of the insane traffic this fic gets to recommend this little fic: [My Beating Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23185273) by [Iske](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iske/pseuds/Iske)! it has a _completely_ different vibe to this fic here, but it's one that focuses on sky and time and their differences of opinion on the master sword... and it is written so, so beautifully. if you've got the time, go check it out and send iske some love! :D


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